Obligatory SPOILER ALERT
Sunshine Cleaning is a good movie in a lot of ways.
First, good acting.
Amy Adams and Emily Blunt were perfect.
Perfectly cast, and dressed precisely like girls that age.
Alan Arkin was okay too.
The guy who played Winston (one-armed janitorial guy) was great.
Lynn, the woman whom Emily Blunt stalked was also great.
So, good acting.
The crime scene premise was cute and, if you get past the gross aspects, kind of interesting.
I was intrigued by the specialized equipment, training, etc.
warning: somewhat gross photo:
*
*
*
The tragedy at the core of the girls’ lives was also well done.
It explains their pain and their attraction to cleaning up death.
The waitress/pie/clues thing was well done too.
Nora (Emily Blunt) was a well-developed character.
Haven’t you known people like her? I have.
The ambiguous relationship between Nora and Lynn was well done.
Rose (Amy Adams) was adorable as always.
Nice leaving the inevitable Rose/Winston romance unstated.
But . . . a few things bug me, and here they are:
1. Oscar clearly had some Big Problems, which were never explained or addressed. Oscar was turning eight years old? His weird cluelessness is ridiculous without a DSM label. What’s his problem? Didn’t your kids know not to ask amputees about missing limbs by the age of, say, 4? Didn’t they know enough not to lick everything after hearing a dumb ghost story?
Instead of any explanation or any attempt to help him, we get only family members insisting that “the meanies don’t understand you.”
I don’t know, he just annoyed me.
2. The melding of comic and tragic was, to say the least, disconcerting at times.
3. What is Rose’s backstory?
WHY didn’t she ever marry? WHERE/WHO is Oscar’s dad?
Is her low self-esteem entirely caused by her mom’s suicide?
So, I’ll give it 2 thumbs and several fingers up,
and 4 stars.
Many Happy Returns 